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What’s the early buzz on The Avengers? Does Matthew Goode want to make a Watchmen prequel movie? Where is the common ground between Chronicle and a famous 80s TV show? Which controversial topic is Archie Comics tackling next? Want to see a Batman-centric clip from Justice League: Doom? Read all this and much more in today’s Superhero Bits. Read More »

For over twenty years, DC has wanted to capitalize on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ best-selling and standard-setting mini-series/graphic novel Watchmen by releasing additional stories featuring the same characters. Ideas about prequel series have been discussed since even before Watchmen‘s publication, with writer Alan Moore floating the idea of a Minutemen prequel series in ’85, and other options being discussed afterward.

Moore backed away from those ideas, and he and Dave Gibbons eventually walked away from DC altogether based, in part, on language in their contract for Watchmen that related to ownership of the characters. In 2010 DC offered to give Watchmen back to Moore if he would write additional stories, but he declined. At the same time, DC Comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, “DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.”

With no option of new stories by Moore and Gibbons, DC has gone ahead with other creators. Rumors of a Watchmen prequel have flown for months, with artwork occasionally hitting the internet and just as soon being hit with cease and desist orders from DC — the best admission that the prequels are really happening.

Indeed, today DC announced Before Watchmen, a set of seven interlocking prequel miniseries that will feature Watchmen characters such as Rorschach, the Comedian and Nite Owl. Details from the press release follow. (Updated with gallery of images for the new series.) Read More »